34 Investigation EIR September 28, 2012
Editor’s Note: As the wave of what is purported to be
spontaneous Islamic rage erupts around the world, it is
crucial for all policymakers and citizens to face the
ugly truth about the crucial actor in this program of
planned chaos and mayhem: Saudi Arabia. It is Saudi
Arabia, as a kept subsidiary of the British monarchy,
which is spending billions and trillions of dollars internationally,
in furtherance of the monarchy’s agenda of
religious warfare and terrorism. The hate propaganda,
the weapons, the bombs are bought and paid for by
Saudi front groups and that nation’s own emissaries,
just as was the Sept. 11, 2001 assault on the United
States.
As Lyndon LaRouche has emphasized, the Saudi
monarchy has got to be held accountable.
In the piece that follows, Ramtanu Maitra
provides a solid profile, with some shocking
particulars, of the British-Saudi terror operations
of the last decades.
Sept. 21—A recent article, “ ‘Al-Qaeda’
American Spring,” in the Syrian news daily
Tahwra al Wehda, pointed out that al-Qaeda,
always having been financed by the Wahhabi
regime of the House of Saud, is now being
transported from Yemen and the Pakistan-Afghanistan
borders to Syria, to fight against
Bashar al-Assad’s regime. What the Syrian
daily did not include is that the transportation
of these terrorists to Syria has the blessings
of the Obama and Cameron administrations.
The article identified the role of the Saudi
intelligence chief, Prince Bandar bin Sultan,
in this new move: “The House of Saud has,
exclusively, provided the financial, political,
religious and media support for al-Qaeda. This
support is emboldened specifically with the
new political role of Bandar bin Sultan after becoming
the head of Saudi intelligence.”
Over many decades, particularly since 9/11, the
Saudi role on behalf of the British, the Zionists, and a
degenerated U.S. leadership, has been to kill Muslims—
both Sunnis and Shias. This is the only way the
House of Saud, highly unstable within Saudi Arabia,
could continue its decrepit leadership in that country.
In other words, by serving the interests of the colonial
and neo-colonial forces, the House of Saud survives.
Britain + House of Saud = al-Qaeda
There is no dearth of evidence that al-Qaeda, the
mighty Sunni terrorist group, whose prime target is the
Shias, was and is financed by the House of Saud at the
The House of Saud: British-
Programmed Killer of Muslims
by Ramtanu Maitra
President George W. Bush and Saudi King Abdullah, 2006. Abdullah has
appointed Bandar to head Saudi intelligence; support for al-Qaeda has
reportedly increased under his leadership.
September 28, 2012 EIR Investigation 35
behest of Britain, if not the
United States and Israel. The
propaganda machine, Western
in particular, has tried in vain
to perpetuate the myth that the
recently eliminated creator of
al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden,
was an enemy of the House of
Saud, since he was banned
from entering Saudi Arabia
after he had attacked U.S. installations.
But the real story is altogether
different. Osama’s al-Qaeda
had always been financed
by the House of Saud
and its lackeys within Saudi
Arabia. It was for this reason
that, following the 9/11 attacks
that killed more nearly
3,000 individuals, Washington
finally moved in to close
down some of the bank accounts
that the Saudis used to
finance Osama’s terrorist
outfit. But those closures were
more show than substance.
The House of Saud has many
other ways to get money to the terrorists and they are
using them today, whether Washington’s security
people admit it or not.
Osama had long been a British asset, to say the
least. In 1999, the French Parliament commissioned a
thorough investigation of global money-laundering.
After publishing reports on Liechtenstein, Monaco,
and Switzerland, it produced a report titled The City of
London, Gibraltar and the Crown Dependencies: Offshore
Centers and Havens for Dirty Money, with an
addendum titled “The Economic Environment of
Osama bin Laden.” The report concluded that up to
40 British banks, companies, and individuals were
associated with bin Laden’s network, including organizations
in London, Oxford, Cheltenham, Cambridge,
and Leeds.
In introducing the report, Arnaud Montebourg, a
French Member of Parliament, concluded: “Tony
Blair, and his government, preaches around the world
against terrorism. He would be well advised to preach
to his own bankers and oblige them to go after dirty
money. . . . Even the Swiss cooperate
more than the
English.”1
The British protection of
Osama began long before
1999, however. Late in 2001,
Saudi-based journalist Adam
Robinson, in his book Bin
Laden: Behind the Mask of the
Terrorist, drew from interviews
with Osama’s immediate
family, and gave a detailed
account of bin Laden’s three
months in England at the beginning
of 1994.
Bin Laden’s London Base
Upon arriving, bin Laden
bought a house on, or near,
Harrow Road in the Wembley
area of London, Robinson
wrote. He paid cash, and used
an intermediary as the named
owner. Bin Laden’s most important
task was setting up his
organization, the Advice and
Reformation Committee
(ARC), to disperse his press
releases and to receive donations. After bin Laden left,
a fellow Saudi “dissident,” Khaled al-Fawwaz, ran the
ARC from London, keeping in touch with bin Laden by
phone, and distributing his statements to the many
Arabic newspapers based in London.
Bin Laden also established relations with two
London residents who were crucial to crafting his
image as an international spokesman for, and mastermind
of, the militant Islamist movement over the years.
The first was Abdel Bari Atwan, the editor of the
Arabic newspaper Al-Quds Al-Arabi, and the other was
radical cleric and Muslim Brother Sheikh Omar Bakri
Muhammad, who called himself “the voice of Osama
bin Laden” and directed the extremist Islamic Liberation
Party and the al-Muhajiroun organization out of
his London mosque.2
1. “UK is money launderers’ paradise,” Oct. 10, 2001, http://www.
american- buddha.com/911.ukmoneylaundererparadise.htm
2. “The Muslim Brotherhood: The Globalists and the Islamists,” Veil of
Politics, Jan. 31, 2011.
EU Photo
“Tony Blair, and his government,” said a French
parliamentarian, preaches around the world against
terrorism. He would be well advised to preach to his
own bankers and oblige them to go after dirty
money.”
36 Investigation EIR September 28, 2012
Omar Bakri Mohammad was also instrumental in
developing another Blair-protected terrorist group,
Hizb ut-Tahrir (HuT), in Britain. HuT later worked
hand-in-glove with al-Qaeda-affiliated terrorists to establish
a strong presence in the “stan” countries of Central
Asia (Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakstan,
and Turkmenistan), and in northern Lebanon. The
HuT, like the House of Saud, preaches Wahhabism and
trains Wahhabi-indoctrinated terrorist killers. A number
of “stan” countries have banned the HuT, but it still
lurks in the shadows and is growing, posing an increasing
threat to Russia’s southern flank and fulfilling the
British, if not American, geopolitical objective.
What tasks did Osama have to carry out for the British
to secure the privilege of Britain’s empire crowd? In
order to understand that, one has to look at the British
policies toward oil-rich Libya, which were put in
motion soon after the defeated Soviet military left Afghanistan
in 1989. The British empire crowd had been
looking longingly to gain control of Libya, and its oil,
for years. But, Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi was
stable and was keeping most of his countrymen content.
The Attempt To Assasinate Qaddafi
In 1996, British saw an opening, when a Libyan
military intelligence officer approached Britain’s foreign
intelligence service, MI6, with a plan to overthrow
Qaddafi, according to former MI5 officer and whistleblower
David Shayler.3 The Libyan, codenamed
“Tunworth,” proposed establishing
links with the Libyan Islamic Fighting
Group (LIFG), an organization formed in
Afghanistan in 1990 from around 500
Libyan jihadists then fighting the Sovietbacked
government.
One former senior member of the LIFG,
Norman Benotman, who first went to Afghanistan
as a 22-year-old in 1989, later said
in an interview that during the Afghan War,
his mujahideen commander was Jalaludin
Haqqani, and that he and fellow militants
had benefitted from British training programs:
“We trained in all types of guerrilla
warfare. We trained on weapons, tactics,
enemy engagement techniques and survival
in hostile environments. All weapons training
was with live ammunition, which was
available everywhere. Indeed, there were a
number of casualties during these training sessions.
There were ex-military people amongst the Mujahideen,
but no formal state forces participated. We were
also trained by the elite units of the Mujahideen who
had themselves been trained by Pakistani Special
Forces, the CIA and the SAS. . . . We had our own specially
designed manuals, but we also made extensive
use of manuals from the American and British military.”
Nota bene: Benotman is an associate of Tony Blair.
When the British people clamored to get the Hizb ut-
Tahrir banned, Blair, using taxpayers’ money, created
the Quillam Foundation, whose supposed “job” was
to identify terrorist groups functioning within Britain.
The foundation was stocked with “former” terrorists,
who were deployed to work for the MI6. As a result,
HuT continues to grow within, and beyond, Britain.
In addition, Benotman’s mujahideen commander,
Jalaluddin Haqqani, is none but the founder of the
Haqqani group which is killing American soldiers in
Afghanistan, while allegedly sheltering itself within
Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA).
Haqqani has had a long history with Saudi, American,
and Pakistani intelligence agencies. During the Af-
3. “Britain, Qadafi and the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group,” Aug. 17,
2011, an extract from Mark Curtis, Secret Affairs: Britain’s Collusion
with Radical Islam (London: Serpent’s Tale, 2010), http://markcurtis.
wordpress.com/2011/08/17/britain-qadafi-and-the-libyan-islamicfighting-
group/).
It is a myth that Osama bin Laden was ever an enemy of the House of Saud.
In fact, al-Qaeda was always financed by Saudi Arabia.
September 28, 2012 EIR Investigation 37
ghanistan jihad against the Soviets,
he was one of the favored
commanders and received millions
of dollars from the West
and the Saudis, as well as
Stinger missiles, rocket-propelled
grenades, mortars, explosives,
and tanks. He became
close with Osama bin Laden
during the jihad, and after the
Taliban took control, he served
as minister of tribal affairs in its
government. According to
some, it is Jalaluddin Haqqani
who introduced suicide bombing
in the Afghanistan-Pakistan
region.
The attempt to assassinate
Qaddafi by the British, using
Osama’s people, failed. Annie
Machon, Shayler’s partner and
a former MI5 officer, writes
that, by the time MI6 paid the money to Tunworth, bin
Laden’s organization was already known to be responsible
for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and
MI5 had set up G9C, “a section dedicated to the task of
defeating bin Laden and his affiliates.” This is significant
in light of Britain’s toleration of bin Laden’s
London base—the Advice and Reformation Committee—
which would not be closed down for another two
and a half years.
U.S. intelligence sources later told the Mail on
Sunday newspaper that MI6 had indeed been behind the
assassination plot and had turned to the LIFG’s leader,
Abu Abdullah Sadiq, who was living in London. The
head of the assassination team was reported as being
the Libya-based Abdal Muhaymeen, a veteran of the
Afghan resistance, and thus possibly trained by MI6 or
the CIA. A smattering of other media investigations
confirmed the plot, while a BBC film documentary
broadcast in August 1998 reported that the Conservative
government ministers then in charge of MI6 gave
no authorization for the operation, and that it was solely
the work of MI6 officers.4
One other fact that needs to be stated here is Washington’s
implicit involvement, by looking the other way
while their “best allies” across the Atlantic were using
4. Ibid.
the “most wanted” terrorists.
The Libyan al-Qaeda cell that
the MI6 and Blair were using included
Anas al-Liby, who remains
on the U.S. government’s
most wanted list, with a reward
of $25 million for his capture.
But this despicable and
morbid episode does not end
here. Two French intelligence
experts, Guillaume Dasquié
and Jean-Charles Brisard, the
latter an advisor to French President
Jacques Chirac, revealed
in their book Forbidden Truth:
U.S.-Taliban Secret Oil Diplomacy
and the Failed Hunt for
bin Laden (2002), that the first
Interpol arrest warrant for bin
Laden was issued by Libya in
March 1998. British and U.S.
intelligence agencies buried the
fact that the arrest warrant had come from Libya and
played down the threat. Five months after the warrant
was issued, al-Qaeda killed more than 200 people in the
truck bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
5
The House of Saud, Zionism, and the British
The importance of the House of Saud to the British
cannot be understood fully without looking back at the
historical role that King Abdulaziz bin Saud (Ibn Saud)
played in helping Britain and France to divide up the Ottoman
Empire by means of the 1916 Sykes-Picot agreement,
and also in bringing the Zionists into Palestine.
When the British Empire picked up Ibn Saud, leader of
the Wahhabi sect, to become the “Keeper of Two Holy
Mosques,” it was in a way the fulfillment of Empire’s
plan. The Hashemite dynasty, which claims the bloodline
of the Prophet Muhammad, was the strongest traditional
Arab force, but its back was broken when Ibn Saud
threw them out of Mecca and Medina. In their “pity,” the
British then put the Hashemites Abdallah bin al-Hussein
and Faisal bin Hussein in place as rulers in Jordan
(1921) and Iraq, respectively. Faisal was briefly pro-
5. Martin Bright, “MI6 ‘halted bid to arrest bin Laden’,” The Observer,
Nov. 10, 2002, http://www.infowars.com/articles/terror/mi6_halted_
bid_arrest_bin_laden.htm
Jalaluddin Haqqani was favored by Saudi,
American, and Pakistani intelligence agencies
during the war in Afghanistan against the Soviet
Union. Now his group is killing Americans there.
38 Investigation EIR September 28, 2012
claimed King of Syria (1920),
and ended up becoming King
of Iraq (1921).
In the subsequent period,
both Iraq and Syria chucked
out these religious leaders
and, to the chagrin of the British
Empire, were taken over
by sectarian political parties.
It is no surprise then that,
with the help of the Americans,
the British were deeply
involved in efforts to overthrow
both these leaders and
bring them under indirect
control—such as now exists
in Bahrain—of the House of
Saud. It should be noted that
when Ibn Saud was just a
desert-based Bedouin, with no
wealth to boast of, it was the
British Empire that funded
his conquest of all of Arabia.
On the other hand, by
picking up a desert-roaming
Bedouin and putting him in
charge of “the Two Holy
Mosques,” Britain bought itself a horde of serfs. And Ibn
Saud delivered quickly, by welcoming the Zionists to the
Arab world! The British groundwork for determining the
destiny of Ibn Saud, and the House—or rather the Tent—
of Saud, was done by the intrepid British intelligence officer
Gertrude Bell. In 1919, at the Paris Conference
ending World War I, Bell argued for the establishment of
independent Arab emirates for the area previously covered
by the Ottoman Empire. The Arab delegation, which
was actually under Bell’s control, was led by Faisal
Saeed al-Ismaily, a Bedouin Sunni steeped in the orthodox
version of the religion, born in Taif (now, Saudi
Arabia), the third son of the Grand Sharif of Mecca.
On Jan. 3, 1919, Faisal and Chaim Weizmann, president
of the World Zionist Organization, signed the
Faisal-Weizmann Agreement for Arab-Jewish cooperation,
in which Faisal conditionally accepted the Balfour
Declaration, based on the fulfillment of British
wartime promises of development of a Jewish homeland
in Palestine, on which subject he made the following
statement: “We Arabs . . . look with the deepest sympathy
on the Zionist movement. Our deputation here in
Paris is fully acquainted with
the proposals submitted yesterday
by the Zionist Organization
to the Peace Conference,
and we regard them as
moderate and proper. We will
do our best, in so far as we
are concerned, to help them
through; we will wish the
Jews a most hearty welcome
home. . . . I look forward, and
my people with me look forward,
to a future in which we
will help you and you will
help us, so that the countries
in which we are mutually interested
may once again take
their places in the community
of the civilized people of the
world.”
Even today, the House of
Saud’s allegiance to the Zionists
who have massively displaced
the Palestinian population,
remains intact. That is
why the House of Saud deploys
its Wahhabi-indoctrinated
terrorists against the Shia Muslims as their prime
target. While it is true that the orthodox Sunnis, and
only the orthodox Sunnis of extreme variety, do not
accept the Shias as Muslims (and hence they ostensibly
do not violate killing of Muslims which Prophet Muhammad
had strongly warned against), there could be
another reason why the Shias are targeted. To begin
with, Britain has had its problems with Iran, a civilization
that would not kowtow to the British Empire the
way the Bedouins did. Secondly, after Iraq was virtually
decimated by the Bush-Cheney-Obama crowd following
9/11, Iran has remained the only active backer
of the Palestinians.
New Role for the House of Saud
In recent years, the House of Saud has been assigned
a new “job” by Britain, and the so-called 1% in the
United States who have trashed the American republic
and adopted the Empire’s method of making money.
These Americans have greatly benfitted by becoming
Britain’s partner in reaping the proceeds of drug money
that is laundered by offshore banks, most of which are
King Ibn Saud (1876-1953) was picked up by the British
and used as their man in Arabia.
September 28, 2012 EIR Investigation 39
located in former British colonies.
Since such “benefits” cannot be accrued
without yielding to what the
Empire-promoters demand, Washington,
under Bush and Obama,
has become as much a partner of
the despotic colonial practices as
Thatcher, Blair, and Cameron.
The Taliban project goes back
a few decades. After the Soviet
Union invaded Afghanistan in December
1979, the “free world” got
together to push the Red Army
back and smack the Russian bear.
Money flowed into Afghanistan
from the West and the Persian
Gulf, with the intent of protecting
the sovereignty of Afghanistan,
preserving Islam, and crippling
the Communists.
During the 1980s, Saudifunded
radical Pakistani madrassas
(seminaries) had pumped out
thousands of Afghan foot soldiers
for the U.S.- and Saudi-funded
jihad against the Soviets. They
also helped bind the independentminded
Pushtun tribesmen closely
to the Pakistani government for
the first time in history, easing the
acute insecurity that Pakistan had
felt with respect to Afghanistan
and the disputed border.
It is hardly a secret that rich
Saudis, including those running
the government, have used their
considerable oil wealth to spread political and ideological
influence throughout the world. One need look no
further than the close-knit relationship between the
House of Saud and the Bush family to understand the
Saudis’ powerful reach across the globe. In Muslim
countries, though, its presence is more explicitly ideological.
Indeed, since 9/11, it has become increasingly
clear that Saudi money frequently makes its way into
the hands of Islamic extremists.
As Afghanistan plunged into civil war in the 1990s,
the Saudis began funding new madrassas in Pakistan’s
Pushtun-majority areas, near the Afghan border, as well
as in the port city of Karachi and in rural Punjab. The
Pakistani Army saw the large number of madrassatrained
jihadis as an asset for its covert support of the
Taliban in Afghanistan, as well as its proxy war with
India in Kashmir.
While in Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province
(NWFP), bordering Afghanistan, and the gateway to
the famed Khyber Pass, madrassas supplied both
Afghan refugees and Pakistanis as cannon fodder for
the Taliban, the Binori madrassa and others associated
with it formed the base for Deobandi groups (not too
distant from the Wahhabi), such as Harkat-ul-Mujahideen
and Jaish-e-Mohammed, which sought to do the
Pakistan Army’s bidding in Kashmir. The many Ahle-
FIGURE 1
40 Investigation EIR September 28, 2012
Hadith seminaries supplied Salafi (Wahhabi) groups,
such as the Lashkar-e-Taiba. Arab sheikhs funded madrassas
in the Rahimyar Khan area of rural Punjab,
which formed the backbone of hard-core anti-Shi’ite
jihadi groups like the Sipah-e-Sahaba, and its even
more militant offshoot, the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi.
All these groups shared training camps and other
facilities, under the aegis of Pakistan’s Inter-Services
Intelligence (ISI).
The Saudi and Gulf petrodollars encouraged a
What Is Wahhabism?
One of the most rigid and reactionary sects in all of
Islam today is Wahhabism. It is the official and dominant
Sunni sect in Saudi Arabia, whose sole constitution
is the Holy Qur’an. Wahhabism was born in the
middle of the 18th Century in the Arabian Peninsula’s
central region of Najd. The Wahhabi sect derives its
name from the name of its founder Mohammad Ibn
Abdul-Wahhab (1703-92). Like most Sunni Islamic
fundamentalist movements, the Wahhabis have advocated
the fusion of state power and religion through
the reestablishment of the Islamic Caliphate, the form
of government adopted by the Prophet Muhammad’s
successors during the age of Muslim expansion. What
sets Wahhabism apart from other Sunni Islamist
movements is its historical obsession with purging
Sufis, Shiites, and other Muslims who do not conform
to its twisted interpretation of Islamic scripture.
Wahhabism and Saudi Arabia’s ruling House of
Saud have been intimately intertwined since their
births. Wahhabism created the Saudi monarchy, and
the House of Saud spread Wahhabism. One could not
have existed without the other. Wahhabism gives the
House of Saud legitimacy, and the House of Saud
protects and promotes Wahhabism. In 1744, Ibn Abd
al-Wahhab forged an historic alliance with the al-
Saud clan and sanctified its drive to vanquish its
rivals. In return, the House of Saud supported campaigns
by Wahhabi zealots to cleanse the land of “unbelievers.”
In 1801, Saudi-Wahhabi warriors crossed
into present-day Iraq and sacked the Shiite holy city
of Karbala, killing over 4,000 people.
Various Saudi-Wahhabi terrorist acts and blasphemous
crimes historically aroused the deep anger
of Muslims around the world. In 1818, as the official
ruler of the Arabian Peninsula and the guardian of
Islam’s holiest mosques, the Ottoman Caliph in Istanbul,
Caliph Mahmud II, ordered an Egyptian force
to be sent to the Arabian Peninsula to punish the
Saudi-Wahhabi clan. An Egyptian army destroyed
the Wahhabis and razed their desert capital of
Dir’iyyah to the ground. The Wahhabi Imam Abdullah
al-Saud and two of his followers were sent to Istanbul
in chains, where they were publicly beheaded.
The rest of the leadership of the Saudi-Wahhabi clan
was held in captivity in Cairo.
Although Wahhabism was destroyed in 1818, it
was soon revived with the help of British colonialism.
After the execution of Imam Abdullah al-Saud,
the remnants of the Saudi-Wahhabi clan looked at
their Arab and Muslim brothers as their real enemies,
and to Britain and the West in general as their true
friends. Accordingly, when Britain colonized Bahrain
in 1820, and began to look for ways to expand its
colonization in the area, the House of Saud found it a
great opportunity to seek British protection and help.
In 1843, the Wahhabi Imam Faisal Ibn Turki al-
Saud escaped from captivity in Cairo and returned to
Riyadh, where he began to make contacts with the
British. In 1848 he appealed to the British Political
Resident in the Persian city of Bushere “to support
his representative in Trucial Oman.” The British sent
Col. Lewis Pelly to Riyadh in 1865 to establish an
official treaty with the House of Saud. To impress
Pelly with his fanaticism and violence, Imam Faisal
said that the major difference in the Wahhabi strategy
between political and religious wars was that in the
latter there would be no compromise, for “we kill
everybody” (quoted in Robert Lacey, The Kingdom:
Arabia and the House of Saud (New York: Harcourt
Brace Jovanovich, 1981).
In 1866, the Wahhabi House of Saud signed a
friendship treaty with Britain. The treaty was similar
to the many unequal treaties imposed by Britain on
other Arab puppets along the Persian Gulf. In exchange
for British help, money, and weapons, the
House of Saud agreed to collaborate with Britain’s
colonial authorities in the area.
— Ramtanu Maitra
September 28, 2012 EIR Investigation 41
Wahhabi jihad-centered curriculum at the madrassas.
Prominent madrassas included the Darul Uloom
Haqqania at Akora Khattak in the NWFP and the
Binori madrassa in Karachi. The Haqqania boasts
almost the entire Taliban leadership among its alumni,
including top leader Mullah Omar, while the Binori
madrassa, whose leader Mufti Shamzai was assassinated,
was once talked about as a possible hiding
place of Osama bin Laden; it is also reportedly the
place where bin Laden met Mullah Omar to form the
al-Qaeda-Taliban partnership.
The House of Saud worked hand-in-glove with al-
Qaeda in setting up these madrassas. For instance,
Saudi Arabia’s Prince Turki bin Faisal, who had
taken over the General Intelligence Directorate (GID),
Riyadh’s main intelligence service, in 1977 and headed
it until 2001, had known bin Laden since 1978. Bin
Laden became one of the linchpins of the GID’s funding
policy toward the ISI and anti-Soviet warfare in
Afghanistan, and he met with Turki several times in
Islamabad. Many years afterward, in 1998, when bin
Laden had already become engaged in an anti-American
crusade, Turki allegedly requested his extradition
from Taliban leader Mullah Omar, but was not successful.
Madrassas: Poison Them Young
In 2007, former U.S. Ambassador to Costa Rica
Curtin Winsor, in an article for Global Politician,6
pointed out that while Saudi extremists remain the vanguard
of Islamic theofascism around the world, the
growth potential for this ideology lies outside the Kingdom.
“The Saudis have spent at least $87 billion propagating
Wahhabism abroad during the past two decades,
and the scale of financing is believed to have increased
in the past two years as oil prices have skyrocketed. The
bulk of this funding goes to the construction and operating
expenses of mosques, madrassas, and other religious
institutions that preach Wahhabism. It also supports
the training of imams; domination of mass media
and publishing outlets; distribution of Wahhabi textbooks
and other literature; and endowments to universities
(in exchange for influence over the appointment
of Islamic scholars). By comparison, the Communist
Party of the USSR and its Comintern spent just over $7
6. Amb. Curtin Winsor, Ph.D., “Saudi Arabia, Wahhabism and the
Spread of Sunni Theofascism,” Global Politician, Oct. 22, 2007, http://
www.globalpolitician.com/print.asp?id=3661.
billion propagating its ideology worldwide between
1921 and 1991.”
From an astonishing cable published by the Pakistani
newspaper Dawn,7 however, it would seem that
significant sums of Saudi money are fostering religious
radicalism in previously moderate regions of Pakistan.
The cable, dating from late 2008, paints an unsettling
picture of wealth’s powerful influence in those underdeveloped
areas of Central Asia in need of the most attention.
Bryan Hunt, then-principal officer at the U.S.
consulate in Lahore, reported a string of troubling findings
from his forays into southern Punjab, where he
“was repeatedly told that a sophisticated jihadi recruitment
network had been developed in the Multan, Bahawalpur,
and Dera Ghazi Khan Divisions.”
The cable describes ways in which recruiters exploit
families with multiple children, particularly those
facing severe financial difficulties in light of inflation,
poor crop yields, and growing unemployment in southern
and western Punjab. Often these families are identified
and initially approached/assisted by ostensibly
“charitable” organizations including Jamaat-ud-Dawa
(a front for the terrorist organization Lashkar-e-Taiba),
the Al-Khidmat Foundation (linked to the religious
political party Jamaat-e-Islami), or Jaish-e-Mohammad
(a charitable front for the designated foreign terrorist
organization of the same name).
Wahhabi proselytizing is not limited to the Islamic
world. The Saudis have financed the growth of thousands
of Wahhabi mosques, madrassas, and other religious institutions
in many non-Islamic countries. Wahhabi penetration
is deepest in the social welfare states of Western
Europe, where chronically high unemployment has created
large pools of able-bodied young Muslim men who
have “become permanent wards of the state at the cost of
their basic human dignity,” according to the cable.
The House of Saud’s madrassa project is very active
in South Asia as well. According to 2004 reports, the
Saudi Embassy in New Delhi was pushing India’s
Human Resource Development Ministry and Minorities
Commission to set up new madrassas in India, and
the Saudi Royal Family has cleared plans to construct
4,500 madrassas in India, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri
Lanka at a cost of $35 million, to promote “modern and
liberal education with Islamic values.”
7. Michael Busch, “WikiLeaks: Saudi-Financed Madrassas More
Widespread in Pakistan Than Thought, Dawn, May 26, 2011.
Editor’s Note: As the wave of what is purported to be
spontaneous Islamic rage erupts around the world, it is
crucial for all policymakers and citizens to face the
ugly truth about the crucial actor in this program of
planned chaos and mayhem: Saudi Arabia. It is Saudi
Arabia, as a kept subsidiary of the British monarchy,
which is spending billions and trillions of dollars internationally,
in furtherance of the monarchy’s agenda of
religious warfare and terrorism. The hate propaganda,
the weapons, the bombs are bought and paid for by
Saudi front groups and that nation’s own emissaries,
just as was the Sept. 11, 2001 assault on the United
States.
As Lyndon LaRouche has emphasized, the Saudi
monarchy has got to be held accountable.
In the piece that follows, Ramtanu Maitra
provides a solid profile, with some shocking
particulars, of the British-Saudi terror operations
of the last decades.
Sept. 21—A recent article, “ ‘Al-Qaeda’
American Spring,” in the Syrian news daily
Tahwra al Wehda, pointed out that al-Qaeda,
always having been financed by the Wahhabi
regime of the House of Saud, is now being
transported from Yemen and the Pakistan-Afghanistan
borders to Syria, to fight against
Bashar al-Assad’s regime. What the Syrian
daily did not include is that the transportation
of these terrorists to Syria has the blessings
of the Obama and Cameron administrations.
The article identified the role of the Saudi
intelligence chief, Prince Bandar bin Sultan,
in this new move: “The House of Saud has,
exclusively, provided the financial, political,
religious and media support for al-Qaeda. This
support is emboldened specifically with the
new political role of Bandar bin Sultan after becoming
the head of Saudi intelligence.”
Over many decades, particularly since 9/11, the
Saudi role on behalf of the British, the Zionists, and a
degenerated U.S. leadership, has been to kill Muslims—
both Sunnis and Shias. This is the only way the
House of Saud, highly unstable within Saudi Arabia,
could continue its decrepit leadership in that country.
In other words, by serving the interests of the colonial
and neo-colonial forces, the House of Saud survives.
Britain + House of Saud = al-Qaeda
There is no dearth of evidence that al-Qaeda, the
mighty Sunni terrorist group, whose prime target is the
Shias, was and is financed by the House of Saud at the
The House of Saud: British-
Programmed Killer of Muslims
by Ramtanu Maitra
President George W. Bush and Saudi King Abdullah, 2006. Abdullah has
appointed Bandar to head Saudi intelligence; support for al-Qaeda has
reportedly increased under his leadership.
September 28, 2012 EIR Investigation 35
behest of Britain, if not the
United States and Israel. The
propaganda machine, Western
in particular, has tried in vain
to perpetuate the myth that the
recently eliminated creator of
al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden,
was an enemy of the House of
Saud, since he was banned
from entering Saudi Arabia
after he had attacked U.S. installations.
But the real story is altogether
different. Osama’s al-Qaeda
had always been financed
by the House of Saud
and its lackeys within Saudi
Arabia. It was for this reason
that, following the 9/11 attacks
that killed more nearly
3,000 individuals, Washington
finally moved in to close
down some of the bank accounts
that the Saudis used to
finance Osama’s terrorist
outfit. But those closures were
more show than substance.
The House of Saud has many
other ways to get money to the terrorists and they are
using them today, whether Washington’s security
people admit it or not.
Osama had long been a British asset, to say the
least. In 1999, the French Parliament commissioned a
thorough investigation of global money-laundering.
After publishing reports on Liechtenstein, Monaco,
and Switzerland, it produced a report titled The City of
London, Gibraltar and the Crown Dependencies: Offshore
Centers and Havens for Dirty Money, with an
addendum titled “The Economic Environment of
Osama bin Laden.” The report concluded that up to
40 British banks, companies, and individuals were
associated with bin Laden’s network, including organizations
in London, Oxford, Cheltenham, Cambridge,
and Leeds.
In introducing the report, Arnaud Montebourg, a
French Member of Parliament, concluded: “Tony
Blair, and his government, preaches around the world
against terrorism. He would be well advised to preach
to his own bankers and oblige them to go after dirty
money. . . . Even the Swiss cooperate
more than the
English.”1
The British protection of
Osama began long before
1999, however. Late in 2001,
Saudi-based journalist Adam
Robinson, in his book Bin
Laden: Behind the Mask of the
Terrorist, drew from interviews
with Osama’s immediate
family, and gave a detailed
account of bin Laden’s three
months in England at the beginning
of 1994.
Bin Laden’s London Base
Upon arriving, bin Laden
bought a house on, or near,
Harrow Road in the Wembley
area of London, Robinson
wrote. He paid cash, and used
an intermediary as the named
owner. Bin Laden’s most important
task was setting up his
organization, the Advice and
Reformation Committee
(ARC), to disperse his press
releases and to receive donations. After bin Laden left,
a fellow Saudi “dissident,” Khaled al-Fawwaz, ran the
ARC from London, keeping in touch with bin Laden by
phone, and distributing his statements to the many
Arabic newspapers based in London.
Bin Laden also established relations with two
London residents who were crucial to crafting his
image as an international spokesman for, and mastermind
of, the militant Islamist movement over the years.
The first was Abdel Bari Atwan, the editor of the
Arabic newspaper Al-Quds Al-Arabi, and the other was
radical cleric and Muslim Brother Sheikh Omar Bakri
Muhammad, who called himself “the voice of Osama
bin Laden” and directed the extremist Islamic Liberation
Party and the al-Muhajiroun organization out of
his London mosque.2
1. “UK is money launderers’ paradise,” Oct. 10, 2001, http://www.
american- buddha.com/911.ukmoneylaundererparadise.htm
2. “The Muslim Brotherhood: The Globalists and the Islamists,” Veil of
Politics, Jan. 31, 2011.
EU Photo
“Tony Blair, and his government,” said a French
parliamentarian, preaches around the world against
terrorism. He would be well advised to preach to his
own bankers and oblige them to go after dirty
money.”
36 Investigation EIR September 28, 2012
Omar Bakri Mohammad was also instrumental in
developing another Blair-protected terrorist group,
Hizb ut-Tahrir (HuT), in Britain. HuT later worked
hand-in-glove with al-Qaeda-affiliated terrorists to establish
a strong presence in the “stan” countries of Central
Asia (Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakstan,
and Turkmenistan), and in northern Lebanon. The
HuT, like the House of Saud, preaches Wahhabism and
trains Wahhabi-indoctrinated terrorist killers. A number
of “stan” countries have banned the HuT, but it still
lurks in the shadows and is growing, posing an increasing
threat to Russia’s southern flank and fulfilling the
British, if not American, geopolitical objective.
What tasks did Osama have to carry out for the British
to secure the privilege of Britain’s empire crowd? In
order to understand that, one has to look at the British
policies toward oil-rich Libya, which were put in
motion soon after the defeated Soviet military left Afghanistan
in 1989. The British empire crowd had been
looking longingly to gain control of Libya, and its oil,
for years. But, Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi was
stable and was keeping most of his countrymen content.
The Attempt To Assasinate Qaddafi
In 1996, British saw an opening, when a Libyan
military intelligence officer approached Britain’s foreign
intelligence service, MI6, with a plan to overthrow
Qaddafi, according to former MI5 officer and whistleblower
David Shayler.3 The Libyan, codenamed
“Tunworth,” proposed establishing
links with the Libyan Islamic Fighting
Group (LIFG), an organization formed in
Afghanistan in 1990 from around 500
Libyan jihadists then fighting the Sovietbacked
government.
One former senior member of the LIFG,
Norman Benotman, who first went to Afghanistan
as a 22-year-old in 1989, later said
in an interview that during the Afghan War,
his mujahideen commander was Jalaludin
Haqqani, and that he and fellow militants
had benefitted from British training programs:
“We trained in all types of guerrilla
warfare. We trained on weapons, tactics,
enemy engagement techniques and survival
in hostile environments. All weapons training
was with live ammunition, which was
available everywhere. Indeed, there were a
number of casualties during these training sessions.
There were ex-military people amongst the Mujahideen,
but no formal state forces participated. We were
also trained by the elite units of the Mujahideen who
had themselves been trained by Pakistani Special
Forces, the CIA and the SAS. . . . We had our own specially
designed manuals, but we also made extensive
use of manuals from the American and British military.”
Nota bene: Benotman is an associate of Tony Blair.
When the British people clamored to get the Hizb ut-
Tahrir banned, Blair, using taxpayers’ money, created
the Quillam Foundation, whose supposed “job” was
to identify terrorist groups functioning within Britain.
The foundation was stocked with “former” terrorists,
who were deployed to work for the MI6. As a result,
HuT continues to grow within, and beyond, Britain.
In addition, Benotman’s mujahideen commander,
Jalaluddin Haqqani, is none but the founder of the
Haqqani group which is killing American soldiers in
Afghanistan, while allegedly sheltering itself within
Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA).
Haqqani has had a long history with Saudi, American,
and Pakistani intelligence agencies. During the Af-
3. “Britain, Qadafi and the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group,” Aug. 17,
2011, an extract from Mark Curtis, Secret Affairs: Britain’s Collusion
with Radical Islam (London: Serpent’s Tale, 2010), http://markcurtis.
wordpress.com/2011/08/17/britain-qadafi-and-the-libyan-islamicfighting-
group/).
It is a myth that Osama bin Laden was ever an enemy of the House of Saud.
In fact, al-Qaeda was always financed by Saudi Arabia.
September 28, 2012 EIR Investigation 37
ghanistan jihad against the Soviets,
he was one of the favored
commanders and received millions
of dollars from the West
and the Saudis, as well as
Stinger missiles, rocket-propelled
grenades, mortars, explosives,
and tanks. He became
close with Osama bin Laden
during the jihad, and after the
Taliban took control, he served
as minister of tribal affairs in its
government. According to
some, it is Jalaluddin Haqqani
who introduced suicide bombing
in the Afghanistan-Pakistan
region.
The attempt to assassinate
Qaddafi by the British, using
Osama’s people, failed. Annie
Machon, Shayler’s partner and
a former MI5 officer, writes
that, by the time MI6 paid the money to Tunworth, bin
Laden’s organization was already known to be responsible
for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and
MI5 had set up G9C, “a section dedicated to the task of
defeating bin Laden and his affiliates.” This is significant
in light of Britain’s toleration of bin Laden’s
London base—the Advice and Reformation Committee—
which would not be closed down for another two
and a half years.
U.S. intelligence sources later told the Mail on
Sunday newspaper that MI6 had indeed been behind the
assassination plot and had turned to the LIFG’s leader,
Abu Abdullah Sadiq, who was living in London. The
head of the assassination team was reported as being
the Libya-based Abdal Muhaymeen, a veteran of the
Afghan resistance, and thus possibly trained by MI6 or
the CIA. A smattering of other media investigations
confirmed the plot, while a BBC film documentary
broadcast in August 1998 reported that the Conservative
government ministers then in charge of MI6 gave
no authorization for the operation, and that it was solely
the work of MI6 officers.4
One other fact that needs to be stated here is Washington’s
implicit involvement, by looking the other way
while their “best allies” across the Atlantic were using
4. Ibid.
the “most wanted” terrorists.
The Libyan al-Qaeda cell that
the MI6 and Blair were using included
Anas al-Liby, who remains
on the U.S. government’s
most wanted list, with a reward
of $25 million for his capture.
But this despicable and
morbid episode does not end
here. Two French intelligence
experts, Guillaume Dasquié
and Jean-Charles Brisard, the
latter an advisor to French President
Jacques Chirac, revealed
in their book Forbidden Truth:
U.S.-Taliban Secret Oil Diplomacy
and the Failed Hunt for
bin Laden (2002), that the first
Interpol arrest warrant for bin
Laden was issued by Libya in
March 1998. British and U.S.
intelligence agencies buried the
fact that the arrest warrant had come from Libya and
played down the threat. Five months after the warrant
was issued, al-Qaeda killed more than 200 people in the
truck bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
5
The House of Saud, Zionism, and the British
The importance of the House of Saud to the British
cannot be understood fully without looking back at the
historical role that King Abdulaziz bin Saud (Ibn Saud)
played in helping Britain and France to divide up the Ottoman
Empire by means of the 1916 Sykes-Picot agreement,
and also in bringing the Zionists into Palestine.
When the British Empire picked up Ibn Saud, leader of
the Wahhabi sect, to become the “Keeper of Two Holy
Mosques,” it was in a way the fulfillment of Empire’s
plan. The Hashemite dynasty, which claims the bloodline
of the Prophet Muhammad, was the strongest traditional
Arab force, but its back was broken when Ibn Saud
threw them out of Mecca and Medina. In their “pity,” the
British then put the Hashemites Abdallah bin al-Hussein
and Faisal bin Hussein in place as rulers in Jordan
(1921) and Iraq, respectively. Faisal was briefly pro-
5. Martin Bright, “MI6 ‘halted bid to arrest bin Laden’,” The Observer,
Nov. 10, 2002, http://www.infowars.com/articles/terror/mi6_halted_
bid_arrest_bin_laden.htm
Jalaluddin Haqqani was favored by Saudi,
American, and Pakistani intelligence agencies
during the war in Afghanistan against the Soviet
Union. Now his group is killing Americans there.
38 Investigation EIR September 28, 2012
claimed King of Syria (1920),
and ended up becoming King
of Iraq (1921).
In the subsequent period,
both Iraq and Syria chucked
out these religious leaders
and, to the chagrin of the British
Empire, were taken over
by sectarian political parties.
It is no surprise then that,
with the help of the Americans,
the British were deeply
involved in efforts to overthrow
both these leaders and
bring them under indirect
control—such as now exists
in Bahrain—of the House of
Saud. It should be noted that
when Ibn Saud was just a
desert-based Bedouin, with no
wealth to boast of, it was the
British Empire that funded
his conquest of all of Arabia.
On the other hand, by
picking up a desert-roaming
Bedouin and putting him in
charge of “the Two Holy
Mosques,” Britain bought itself a horde of serfs. And Ibn
Saud delivered quickly, by welcoming the Zionists to the
Arab world! The British groundwork for determining the
destiny of Ibn Saud, and the House—or rather the Tent—
of Saud, was done by the intrepid British intelligence officer
Gertrude Bell. In 1919, at the Paris Conference
ending World War I, Bell argued for the establishment of
independent Arab emirates for the area previously covered
by the Ottoman Empire. The Arab delegation, which
was actually under Bell’s control, was led by Faisal
Saeed al-Ismaily, a Bedouin Sunni steeped in the orthodox
version of the religion, born in Taif (now, Saudi
Arabia), the third son of the Grand Sharif of Mecca.
On Jan. 3, 1919, Faisal and Chaim Weizmann, president
of the World Zionist Organization, signed the
Faisal-Weizmann Agreement for Arab-Jewish cooperation,
in which Faisal conditionally accepted the Balfour
Declaration, based on the fulfillment of British
wartime promises of development of a Jewish homeland
in Palestine, on which subject he made the following
statement: “We Arabs . . . look with the deepest sympathy
on the Zionist movement. Our deputation here in
Paris is fully acquainted with
the proposals submitted yesterday
by the Zionist Organization
to the Peace Conference,
and we regard them as
moderate and proper. We will
do our best, in so far as we
are concerned, to help them
through; we will wish the
Jews a most hearty welcome
home. . . . I look forward, and
my people with me look forward,
to a future in which we
will help you and you will
help us, so that the countries
in which we are mutually interested
may once again take
their places in the community
of the civilized people of the
world.”
Even today, the House of
Saud’s allegiance to the Zionists
who have massively displaced
the Palestinian population,
remains intact. That is
why the House of Saud deploys
its Wahhabi-indoctrinated
terrorists against the Shia Muslims as their prime
target. While it is true that the orthodox Sunnis, and
only the orthodox Sunnis of extreme variety, do not
accept the Shias as Muslims (and hence they ostensibly
do not violate killing of Muslims which Prophet Muhammad
had strongly warned against), there could be
another reason why the Shias are targeted. To begin
with, Britain has had its problems with Iran, a civilization
that would not kowtow to the British Empire the
way the Bedouins did. Secondly, after Iraq was virtually
decimated by the Bush-Cheney-Obama crowd following
9/11, Iran has remained the only active backer
of the Palestinians.
New Role for the House of Saud
In recent years, the House of Saud has been assigned
a new “job” by Britain, and the so-called 1% in the
United States who have trashed the American republic
and adopted the Empire’s method of making money.
These Americans have greatly benfitted by becoming
Britain’s partner in reaping the proceeds of drug money
that is laundered by offshore banks, most of which are
King Ibn Saud (1876-1953) was picked up by the British
and used as their man in Arabia.
September 28, 2012 EIR Investigation 39
located in former British colonies.
Since such “benefits” cannot be accrued
without yielding to what the
Empire-promoters demand, Washington,
under Bush and Obama,
has become as much a partner of
the despotic colonial practices as
Thatcher, Blair, and Cameron.
The Taliban project goes back
a few decades. After the Soviet
Union invaded Afghanistan in December
1979, the “free world” got
together to push the Red Army
back and smack the Russian bear.
Money flowed into Afghanistan
from the West and the Persian
Gulf, with the intent of protecting
the sovereignty of Afghanistan,
preserving Islam, and crippling
the Communists.
During the 1980s, Saudifunded
radical Pakistani madrassas
(seminaries) had pumped out
thousands of Afghan foot soldiers
for the U.S.- and Saudi-funded
jihad against the Soviets. They
also helped bind the independentminded
Pushtun tribesmen closely
to the Pakistani government for
the first time in history, easing the
acute insecurity that Pakistan had
felt with respect to Afghanistan
and the disputed border.
It is hardly a secret that rich
Saudis, including those running
the government, have used their
considerable oil wealth to spread political and ideological
influence throughout the world. One need look no
further than the close-knit relationship between the
House of Saud and the Bush family to understand the
Saudis’ powerful reach across the globe. In Muslim
countries, though, its presence is more explicitly ideological.
Indeed, since 9/11, it has become increasingly
clear that Saudi money frequently makes its way into
the hands of Islamic extremists.
As Afghanistan plunged into civil war in the 1990s,
the Saudis began funding new madrassas in Pakistan’s
Pushtun-majority areas, near the Afghan border, as well
as in the port city of Karachi and in rural Punjab. The
Pakistani Army saw the large number of madrassatrained
jihadis as an asset for its covert support of the
Taliban in Afghanistan, as well as its proxy war with
India in Kashmir.
While in Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province
(NWFP), bordering Afghanistan, and the gateway to
the famed Khyber Pass, madrassas supplied both
Afghan refugees and Pakistanis as cannon fodder for
the Taliban, the Binori madrassa and others associated
with it formed the base for Deobandi groups (not too
distant from the Wahhabi), such as Harkat-ul-Mujahideen
and Jaish-e-Mohammed, which sought to do the
Pakistan Army’s bidding in Kashmir. The many Ahle-
FIGURE 1
40 Investigation EIR September 28, 2012
Hadith seminaries supplied Salafi (Wahhabi) groups,
such as the Lashkar-e-Taiba. Arab sheikhs funded madrassas
in the Rahimyar Khan area of rural Punjab,
which formed the backbone of hard-core anti-Shi’ite
jihadi groups like the Sipah-e-Sahaba, and its even
more militant offshoot, the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi.
All these groups shared training camps and other
facilities, under the aegis of Pakistan’s Inter-Services
Intelligence (ISI).
The Saudi and Gulf petrodollars encouraged a
What Is Wahhabism?
One of the most rigid and reactionary sects in all of
Islam today is Wahhabism. It is the official and dominant
Sunni sect in Saudi Arabia, whose sole constitution
is the Holy Qur’an. Wahhabism was born in the
middle of the 18th Century in the Arabian Peninsula’s
central region of Najd. The Wahhabi sect derives its
name from the name of its founder Mohammad Ibn
Abdul-Wahhab (1703-92). Like most Sunni Islamic
fundamentalist movements, the Wahhabis have advocated
the fusion of state power and religion through
the reestablishment of the Islamic Caliphate, the form
of government adopted by the Prophet Muhammad’s
successors during the age of Muslim expansion. What
sets Wahhabism apart from other Sunni Islamist
movements is its historical obsession with purging
Sufis, Shiites, and other Muslims who do not conform
to its twisted interpretation of Islamic scripture.
Wahhabism and Saudi Arabia’s ruling House of
Saud have been intimately intertwined since their
births. Wahhabism created the Saudi monarchy, and
the House of Saud spread Wahhabism. One could not
have existed without the other. Wahhabism gives the
House of Saud legitimacy, and the House of Saud
protects and promotes Wahhabism. In 1744, Ibn Abd
al-Wahhab forged an historic alliance with the al-
Saud clan and sanctified its drive to vanquish its
rivals. In return, the House of Saud supported campaigns
by Wahhabi zealots to cleanse the land of “unbelievers.”
In 1801, Saudi-Wahhabi warriors crossed
into present-day Iraq and sacked the Shiite holy city
of Karbala, killing over 4,000 people.
Various Saudi-Wahhabi terrorist acts and blasphemous
crimes historically aroused the deep anger
of Muslims around the world. In 1818, as the official
ruler of the Arabian Peninsula and the guardian of
Islam’s holiest mosques, the Ottoman Caliph in Istanbul,
Caliph Mahmud II, ordered an Egyptian force
to be sent to the Arabian Peninsula to punish the
Saudi-Wahhabi clan. An Egyptian army destroyed
the Wahhabis and razed their desert capital of
Dir’iyyah to the ground. The Wahhabi Imam Abdullah
al-Saud and two of his followers were sent to Istanbul
in chains, where they were publicly beheaded.
The rest of the leadership of the Saudi-Wahhabi clan
was held in captivity in Cairo.
Although Wahhabism was destroyed in 1818, it
was soon revived with the help of British colonialism.
After the execution of Imam Abdullah al-Saud,
the remnants of the Saudi-Wahhabi clan looked at
their Arab and Muslim brothers as their real enemies,
and to Britain and the West in general as their true
friends. Accordingly, when Britain colonized Bahrain
in 1820, and began to look for ways to expand its
colonization in the area, the House of Saud found it a
great opportunity to seek British protection and help.
In 1843, the Wahhabi Imam Faisal Ibn Turki al-
Saud escaped from captivity in Cairo and returned to
Riyadh, where he began to make contacts with the
British. In 1848 he appealed to the British Political
Resident in the Persian city of Bushere “to support
his representative in Trucial Oman.” The British sent
Col. Lewis Pelly to Riyadh in 1865 to establish an
official treaty with the House of Saud. To impress
Pelly with his fanaticism and violence, Imam Faisal
said that the major difference in the Wahhabi strategy
between political and religious wars was that in the
latter there would be no compromise, for “we kill
everybody” (quoted in Robert Lacey, The Kingdom:
Arabia and the House of Saud (New York: Harcourt
Brace Jovanovich, 1981).
In 1866, the Wahhabi House of Saud signed a
friendship treaty with Britain. The treaty was similar
to the many unequal treaties imposed by Britain on
other Arab puppets along the Persian Gulf. In exchange
for British help, money, and weapons, the
House of Saud agreed to collaborate with Britain’s
colonial authorities in the area.
— Ramtanu Maitra
September 28, 2012 EIR Investigation 41
Wahhabi jihad-centered curriculum at the madrassas.
Prominent madrassas included the Darul Uloom
Haqqania at Akora Khattak in the NWFP and the
Binori madrassa in Karachi. The Haqqania boasts
almost the entire Taliban leadership among its alumni,
including top leader Mullah Omar, while the Binori
madrassa, whose leader Mufti Shamzai was assassinated,
was once talked about as a possible hiding
place of Osama bin Laden; it is also reportedly the
place where bin Laden met Mullah Omar to form the
al-Qaeda-Taliban partnership.
The House of Saud worked hand-in-glove with al-
Qaeda in setting up these madrassas. For instance,
Saudi Arabia’s Prince Turki bin Faisal, who had
taken over the General Intelligence Directorate (GID),
Riyadh’s main intelligence service, in 1977 and headed
it until 2001, had known bin Laden since 1978. Bin
Laden became one of the linchpins of the GID’s funding
policy toward the ISI and anti-Soviet warfare in
Afghanistan, and he met with Turki several times in
Islamabad. Many years afterward, in 1998, when bin
Laden had already become engaged in an anti-American
crusade, Turki allegedly requested his extradition
from Taliban leader Mullah Omar, but was not successful.
Madrassas: Poison Them Young
In 2007, former U.S. Ambassador to Costa Rica
Curtin Winsor, in an article for Global Politician,6
pointed out that while Saudi extremists remain the vanguard
of Islamic theofascism around the world, the
growth potential for this ideology lies outside the Kingdom.
“The Saudis have spent at least $87 billion propagating
Wahhabism abroad during the past two decades,
and the scale of financing is believed to have increased
in the past two years as oil prices have skyrocketed. The
bulk of this funding goes to the construction and operating
expenses of mosques, madrassas, and other religious
institutions that preach Wahhabism. It also supports
the training of imams; domination of mass media
and publishing outlets; distribution of Wahhabi textbooks
and other literature; and endowments to universities
(in exchange for influence over the appointment
of Islamic scholars). By comparison, the Communist
Party of the USSR and its Comintern spent just over $7
6. Amb. Curtin Winsor, Ph.D., “Saudi Arabia, Wahhabism and the
Spread of Sunni Theofascism,” Global Politician, Oct. 22, 2007, http://
www.globalpolitician.com/print.asp?id=3661.
billion propagating its ideology worldwide between
1921 and 1991.”
From an astonishing cable published by the Pakistani
newspaper Dawn,7 however, it would seem that
significant sums of Saudi money are fostering religious
radicalism in previously moderate regions of Pakistan.
The cable, dating from late 2008, paints an unsettling
picture of wealth’s powerful influence in those underdeveloped
areas of Central Asia in need of the most attention.
Bryan Hunt, then-principal officer at the U.S.
consulate in Lahore, reported a string of troubling findings
from his forays into southern Punjab, where he
“was repeatedly told that a sophisticated jihadi recruitment
network had been developed in the Multan, Bahawalpur,
and Dera Ghazi Khan Divisions.”
The cable describes ways in which recruiters exploit
families with multiple children, particularly those
facing severe financial difficulties in light of inflation,
poor crop yields, and growing unemployment in southern
and western Punjab. Often these families are identified
and initially approached/assisted by ostensibly
“charitable” organizations including Jamaat-ud-Dawa
(a front for the terrorist organization Lashkar-e-Taiba),
the Al-Khidmat Foundation (linked to the religious
political party Jamaat-e-Islami), or Jaish-e-Mohammad
(a charitable front for the designated foreign terrorist
organization of the same name).
Wahhabi proselytizing is not limited to the Islamic
world. The Saudis have financed the growth of thousands
of Wahhabi mosques, madrassas, and other religious institutions
in many non-Islamic countries. Wahhabi penetration
is deepest in the social welfare states of Western
Europe, where chronically high unemployment has created
large pools of able-bodied young Muslim men who
have “become permanent wards of the state at the cost of
their basic human dignity,” according to the cable.
The House of Saud’s madrassa project is very active
in South Asia as well. According to 2004 reports, the
Saudi Embassy in New Delhi was pushing India’s
Human Resource Development Ministry and Minorities
Commission to set up new madrassas in India, and
the Saudi Royal Family has cleared plans to construct
4,500 madrassas in India, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri
Lanka at a cost of $35 million, to promote “modern and
liberal education with Islamic values.”
7. Michael Busch, “WikiLeaks: Saudi-Financed Madrassas More
Widespread in Pakistan Than Thought, Dawn, May 26, 2011.
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